


with imagination,

by luckybarton



Category: Shin Sekai Yori | From the New World
Genre: Animal Death, Background Relationship, Biological Weapons, Canon-Typical Behavior, Character Study, Epistolary, F/M, Married Asahina Satoru/Watanabe Saki, Post-Canon, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:48:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21794815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luckybarton/pseuds/luckybarton
Summary: The way to change the world is through stories, desperately written and quietly told.Or, the letters Saki wrote, then burned.
Relationships: Asahina Satoru/Watanabe Saki
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	with imagination,

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tenser](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenser/gifts).



I’m going to the summit tomorrow. I passed the full series of precautions set out by the Committee of Librarians. I suppose Satoru must have, too, because I can hear him packing. We will leave at separate times. I must bring the tainted kittens, traded for the purpose of keeping their gene pool broad. He will dust his body and his clothes in powder that they must not be the first to touch.

I will burn this letter after writing it; cast it to the flames like the Power of a child, remember it as if it were my mantra.

I never realised as a child how the adults in our town could possibly have been aware of our deeds, even after learning that they always had known. Secrets are made into tales, tales that we entrust to the world. The motes of truth that drift around them are visible to those who may hold a light.

For now, this is only a story, but it will only be so until we plant the seeds that will allow it to take root.

_ Asahina Saki _  
朝比奈 早季

  
  


After Satoru had made his trip around the exhibition hall, I brought him the cats. They mewled as he ran his fingers through their fur. I asked him if he had washed his hands. He gave the satisfactory answer—no. His clothes, he said, would be destroyed upon our return. This was a disease from the past, one that would weaken and weaken but never kill by itself. It would only spread through the tainted cats and other creatures like them.

_ We aren’t enough like them to die, _ Satoru counselled me.  _ We’d need to be made from the same original species, and we’re not. _

I didn’t see him for the rest of the day. Too many meetings with chairs of other committees. I discussed tales with them, especially those taught in schools. Were any of them outdated? Had any drifted away from their original meanings? What had been effective? Did we need to shift them to a common point? I talked more than I wanted to and less than I would have liked.

_ Asahina Saki _  
朝比奈 早季

  
  


Tales are written like this: a child, often a boy, is lead astray. Boys are the children that most worry the Board of Education; a common statement is that dangerous boys are dangerous faster. They show their fear and anger in more violent, more damaging ways. This is why they are made the protagonists. It’s now being considered that this may have been a harmful tactic, though. What if boys, seeing themselves in these stories, become the demons we prophesized them to be? What if teachers, influenced by the stories they show to their classes, fail to notice a girl who may become a ogre?

In any case, a boy is lead astray. Most commonly, by his own mind. Self-importance, hubris, failing to pay significant enough attention to his peers. Whatever causes his unacceptable state of mind grows until it is all-consuming.

The story ends with the death of the boy, but the continuation of society.

The idea that it is necessary to manage society in this way is the basis of the Ethics Committee. I am perfectly willing to accept that our actions today may well lead to the end of the Committee. That the end of the Committee may bring about the end of society as we know it today. I have no qualms with this. The Ethics Committee has become murderous, enveloped in its own hubris. It cannot be permitted to survive.

_ Asahina Saki _  
朝比奈 早季

  
  


At home, our cats are beginning to grow sickly. The illness has spread rapidly through the population. Our vets do not recognise it.

Pretending to be afraid is becoming difficult.

_ Asahina Saki _  
朝比奈 早季

Just as I was becoming concerned, a visitor from outside our village has come to ask if our tainted cats have fallen ill. He comes alone. I recognise him from the summit, but not his affiliation. He leaves once he has received an affirmative response.

Satisfied that the disease has spread beyond our borders, Satoru has destroyed the final vials of the disease. A new class begins their first year of school today. Perhaps they will all see graduation.

The effects have already been clear within our village. Twice now, the Board of Education has asked to arrange the deaths of students. Both times, we have been unable to fulfil it. The rest of the Committee is scrambling. They’ve asked the Board to try implementing older methods until the cats recover.

One by one, the cats die. The children continue to live. They aren’t aware of the chaos that surrounds them, the threat they were facing that has now been extinguished.

I can only hope that we continue on this path.

_ Asahina Saki _  
朝比奈 早季

  
  


Despite my orchestration of this ‘catastrophe’, I’m overcome by doubts. My mind is full of other methods, other creatures, other forms of destruction that would circumvent the Death of Shame. I share this only with Satoru, these letters, and the ash they become. I’m sure that far away, some committee is planning out new assassination methods. Ways to propagate them around the village.

The taboo nature of the tainted cats—and a lack of willingness to spread the knowledge that the world has permanently changed—means that few rumours about this event have proliferated within the village. Some people know this secret, but unlike all the others, it never seems to diffuse. You either  _ know _ , or your neighbours have not found it worthwhile to tell you.

The whispering must begin, though. Maybe mid-year, when the class sizes haven’t reduced and the parents of the Unified Class start muttering about how there won’t be enough space, why do I still see so many children? Maybe at the end, when the fact that not one person has disappeared will be glaringly apparent. There’s only so much ignoring a person can do.

I’ve been called to a new summit. They never happen at this time of year, not on such short notice. The people summoned to it are part of what seems to a fairly selective list. I have some ideas about what we will be discussing.

I don’t know what direction we’re moving in—only that a current has started in this society that focuses, painfully and obsessively, on remaining stagnant. I choose to believe that wherever we're going, it's a more worthwhile place than where we are now.  


Anything could be possible.

_ Asahina Saki _  
朝比奈 早季


End file.
